“But with the Zuccotti Park encampment removed, and the opera closing on Dec. 1, is that it for Gandhi in New York? Or is it worth asking, what would Gandhi do in the world today?” What Would Gandhi Do? in the New York Times.

I really appreciate that you’re thinking about these issues, but this editorial is poorly informed (or willfully ignorant) and almost comically patronizing.

The Occupy movement is and has been “in the world” (and radically so) from the start. Providing very concrete services well beyond “just protest,” in New York, across the country and all over the world, including food, “shelter” (to the extent police/the state have allowed them), clothing, education, purpose (vocationally and beyond) and, perhaps most fundamentally, direct democratic participation in a vibrant, compassionate community, to any and all who want to participate.

Many people might expect Gandhi to simply occupy and be arrested — but I wonder whether he might have actually taken a different course of action, given his legal training.

The thing with any social movement is gauging the level of wider interest and weighing that against various other factors. I think that he accurately assessed the British presence in India as not just ultimately untenable but, given the war (and postwar colonial actions outside the Subcontinent), immediately untenable.

I’m not sure what he would have done against modern capitalism, but I feel like he would actually have been too much of a realist to “simply” camp out idealistically (with all due respect to OWS for affecting the public discourse).